Concerned about MIL lack of pension

[CherryTTT]

I’m a long way off retiring (20 years or so), but a meeting with a financial planner just got me thinking about how much more I need to put away into my own pension pot. It’s a lot!

MIL stopped working 10 years ago at age 55. For no other reason than she no longer wanted to work for her boss. I think she thought she’s find another job, but was in quite an ageist (beauty) industry, so didn’t manage to get a new one.

She hasn’t had a mortgage since 1998 and has continued to buy expensive clothes, beauty treatments and go on lovely holidays throughout this time. There has been no change in her lifestyle at all since she stopped working. She is a busy social butterfly and has lots of friends and fun, which is great.

I didn’t really think much about it (as it was none of my business) until the past 3 years when DH and I have had to pay for her new boiler, new heating system, roof repairs etc. We had just handed over £8k for urgent works when she went on a £6k holiday 2 months later!

She recently started dropping hints about another big bill she has coming up and just before I was going to mention to DH that we should perhaps pay it for her, she started telling me about the holiday she wants to go on to Mexico in November!

I’ve now told DH that we won’t be helping out financially again. We’ve got our own DC and house to support, as well as our our retirement planning and if someone can’t be frugal themselves, they shouldn’t be expecting handouts from others.

My main concern is about what happens when she is too frail to live alone or has frittered away whatever savings she has left. Her house is worth £300k. Nursing home fees in this area are £1000 a week, so with inflation, her house would cover 5 years of care at most.

What happens after that? Would she need to move from a private nursing home to a state one? I’m thinking what would happen if we couldn’t afford private school fees any longer, our DC would need to move to the local comprehensive.

Does anyone have experience of this?

PIL are a long long time divorced and FIL is still working. He’s made sure he’s got his own pension to support himself in own age. My own DP are self-employed and have private pensions, as well as business assets to rely on, so this issue is only concerning MIL.

It’s hardly an appalling road to go down in a culture that works that way. It’s pretty appalling to judge someone else’s life decisions by the standards of a completely different culture.

Appalling? That is pretty strong and also in my opinion insulting and xenophobic. Maybe "appalling" from a UK, middle-class, first world blinkered perspective. But it is perfectly normal in a great many places and cultures for parents to sacrifice much to educate their children, and for the children, now far better educated and socially mobile than their parents, to support them in their old age. If you find that appalling I am really quite shocked.

I would go so far to say that this would be the norm in countries where there is no welfare state (I think that people who have always lived in the UK often cannot imagine such a situation, no social housing, no state pension, no benefits etc...).

We don't live in one of those countries though. That would be quite different, I've known people from overseas, living here, who send money home to support the family. Doesn't apply to us in the UK.

If people are shocked, I better not say where my parents are from.

I have relatives in that country doing this. I would almost certainly finish myself off with the strain of it. I have cousins my age whose lives are just relentless drudgery of work and care. One reasons my parents came here was that they wanted to live in a different culture.

Op I’m another one wanting to know where this holiday was and how long it was! You are not a cash point!

I live in the UK. I am British. It does apply to me. Don't make assumptions.

The op has highlighted the fact that her mother in law has expensive holidays, buys a lot of clothes and goes out quite a bit but still expects her son and daughter in law to pay for things for her. That's hardly the same as supporting someone in financial need.